Fanshawe Falcons edged out by Hawks in post-season matchup

The Humber Hawks and Fanshawe Falcons men’s baseball teams were eye-to-eye at the end of the year with identical 14-9 records as they moved into the OCAA playoffs.

The Hawks looked to exorcise their playoff demons against the Falcons, who looked for history to repeat itself.

The history between the teams lived up to the hype and led to a seesaw battle during their first match at the championship weekend between them on Oct. 22 at Connorville Park in Etobicoke.

Hawks winning the first match, however, only meant that the two teams would meet again a day later, when the Falcons plucked the Hawks 11-1. That result added a bronze to Humber’s treasury.

Humber faltered in the third inning as they dropped catches allowing multiple Fanshawe players on bases in Saturday’s game.

The Hawks’ mistakes allowed the Falcons to march forward. scoring four runs in the third.

In the fifth Inning, the Hawks responded with an impressive four runs of their own, tying up the game 4-4.

Outfielder Andrew Thomson, batting .397 and having already struck out twice, stepped up to the plate and with a crack of the bat, allowed Keegan Murphy to score.

“I wanna go four for four every game but you got to realize that’s not going to happen. I just kept the right approach and eventually it came.” Thomson said.

Stephen Andreopoulos was next to step up to the plate. He hit as the home crowd erupted, sending Thompson and Chase Cornelisse home and making the score 4-3.

Finally, Tyler Goertzen took to the plate and his hit allowed Andreopoulos to get home tying up the game at four apiece.

In the sixth, the Hawks took their first lead of the game as Keegan Murphy got another run giving the Hawks a 5-4 lead.

“Every game this season we’ve had them at some point, so we knew that we could beat them. We took that frustration and transformed it into fuel for this game. You saw it in this game. We should’ve beaten them, we were up and we fell apart again. It’s been common this season that we fall apart late,” Falcons second basemen Zev Weisdorf said.

That fuel would only increase the Falcons’ frustrations as they blew their 4-0 lead over the Hawks in the playoff opener.

Hawks pitcher Steven Hough played outstandingly well, keeping the Falcons to four runs.

“Our pitcher pitched great, we made a couple errors that gave them that four but they weren’t really getting to him, they had a couple hits but otherwise Stephen did a great job,” Humber Hawks Head Coach Denny Berni said. “We knew if our defence played well we’d be able to hold them.”

The Falcons were only able to build offence in the third inning, losing the game and allowing Humber to enter the knockout game.

“At the end of the day we had a good inning and they had a good inning, it just came down to who made less errors, our pitcher played great,” Falcons head coach Brian Harvey said.

In the knockout round, however, Harvey would exact revenge for his team’s previous five losses to Humber during the season. Falcons would score 11 runs on a dozen hits, forcing Humber’s defenders to post five errors.

Pitcher Rory Pollard, who posted a 3.03 ERA over seven appearances, took the loss. Humber’s catcher Blake Kauer was named a tournament All-Star.